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What’s In A Uniform?: Imperial Attitudes Reflected in Starfleet’s Uniforms
Relationships with imperial attitudes reflected in uniform and costuming in Star Trek
Introduction
Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a post-war and post-scarcity future filled to the brim with infinite diversity in infinite combinations, is often posited as a luxury-filled communist utopia in space.
In the 24th century within the United Federation of Planets, the need for wages and money has broadly been eliminated; everyone can choose to embrace whatever education, craft, or career suits them; no one within the Federation’s bounds is denied shelter, food, or other necessities in exchange for labour or some other pay.
Therefore, no one is press-ganged or forced into service, and there is no obligation or expectation that people join Starfleet. People do so because they want to.
Why do they want to?
Unlike here on Earth today, no one in Starfleet is joining up in order to send money home to their families, in order to get a university degree they couldn’t hope to afford otherwise, in order to feed themselves, house themselves, in order to escape their homes and their families.
Many of them are scientists or would-be explorers. They want to meet new people, and be of service to them, and to the Federation of Planets. They want to help others. They’re curious about the broader universe, desire to seek out new species and new civilisations, new worlds.
They want to go boldly where no one has gone before.
That phrasing was an update in Star Trek: The Next Generation and other Treks from The Original Series —in order to enfranchise Trek’s philosophy of gender equality within its world and universe, “no man” was changed to “no one”, to make it gender-neutral.
But the core of that phrasing still has its problems — to boldly go where no one has gone before?
Which is it? Are we seeking out new species and new civilisations, or are we going where no one has gone before? What is it, by the way, that makes these species and civilisations “new”? Many of the species and civilisations crews in…
